Time to Switching to Second-line Antiretroviral Therapy and Its Predictors Among HIV/AIDS Infected Children at General Hospitals, Northern Ethiopia: A Survival Analysis

Background: With expanding access to pediatric antiretroviral therapy, a growing amount of patients in the developing world has switched to second-line therapy, and some requiring third-line medications. A delay in switch increases mortality and risk of developing opportunistic infections. There remain limited and often conflicting estimates on the use of second-line ART in children. Thus, this study intended to determine the incidence and predictors of switching to second-line antiretroviral therapy among children.MethodsRetrospective follow up study was conducted by reviewing all charts. Data were collected by extraction tool; entered using Epi-data; cleaned and analyzed by STATA V-14. Kaplan-Meier curve, log-rank test, and life table were used for data description and adjusted hazard ratios and p-value for analysis by Cox proportional hazard regression. Any variable at P≤0.25 in the bi-variable analysis was taken to multivariate analysis and significance was declared at P≤0.05. Data were presented using texts, tables, and figures.Results and conclusionAnalysis was conducted on 424 charts with total person-time observation of 11686.1 child-months and incidence switch rate of 5.6 (95% CI 4.36-7.09) per 1000 child-month-observations. Being orphaned [AHR=2.36; 95%CI: 1.10-5.07], suboptimal ART adherence [AHR= 2.10; 95% CI: 1.12-3.92], drug toxicity [AHR= 7.05; 95% CI: 3.61-13.75], advanced recent WHO stage [AHR=2.75; 95%CI: 1.05-7.15], and initiating ART with TB co-infection [AHR=3.08; 95%CI: 1.26-7.51] were significantly associated with switch to second-line ART regimen. Moreover, long duration of ART follow up [AHR=0.75; 95% CI: 0.71-0.81] was found to be protective against switching. Hence, it is better to give priority for strengthening the focused evaluation of tuberculosis co-infection and treatment failure with continuous adherence monitoring. Further research is also needed to evaluate the effect of drug resistance.